Inside a Cabaret
by Silveni
Summary: xCabaretx I don't know. I wrote this a long time ago. There's also something weird about the timeline because I wrote it in the present. slash. R&R please though.


The boy enters the dirty nightclub without falling under the spell of the flashing lights and the laughing girls. He remains free because the night has only just begun, it is early still and the spell is not yet cast. His bleach blond, spiky hair and wallet chain seem out of place in this cabaret. With shoulders stiff, he walks to the office at the back and knocks on the door, half expecting no one to be there, half hoping that no one will answer. Nevertheless, a voice says, "Enter." And so he does.

He sees a man with face painted white, half into a theatrical-looking tuxedo coat sitting at a desk covered with makeup and music and one telephone. (Black, not expensive looking and definitely _not _new.) The man looks up, and his face with its sparkling eyes creases into a look of bemused wonder. "Lost, young boy?"

The boy's hands in the pockets of his leather coat flex and then clench into fists as he snaps out of staring at the strange man. "N-no," he gets out. "I'd like a job working here. At the Kit Kat Klub."

The man cocks his head to the side with a hint of the smile he should wear while performing. (For that is what he does, he is the master of ceremonies at this club.) "Why?" he spits out, not unkindly, but with a peculiar accent, German perhaps.

"I need the money."

The man looks skyward for inspiration and begins to smile wider, while slouching in his chair and turning his rather saucy gaze upon the visiting boy, who couldn't be more than sixteen or seventeen. "You need money, so you come to the dirtiest part of the city and enter a nightclub famous for scandalous dealings." It is a statement, not a question, because if all that isn't true, what is the boy doing there?

"Yes."

"Very good then!" says the master of ceremonies in a surprising change of demeanor. He breaks eye contact with the boy and starts to walk out the door. Upon reaching it, he realizes that the now stunned young blond boy hasn't moved, and is merely staring at him. With over exaggerated exasperation, the man reaches back, grabs the boy's leather jacket, and saucily pulls him along, further into the back rooms of the Kit Kat Klub.

_I don't care much  
Go or stay  
I don't care very much  
Either way_

Sometimes the boy wonders, as he gets off his shift at the cabaret, (8pm to 2am, the longest period he could do without leaving his mother alone) whether the people at the club have homes or whether they go with different people every night and scrounge things like food and clothing where they can. He wouldn't know, he is only working there to earn fast money to fund his band. Every night, before his mother leaves for her job as a nurse, she says that he doesn't have to work, that they will find money for his band some other way, but he knows that hey can't, not without her sacrificing something of her own.

_Hearts grow hard  
On a windy street  
Lips grow cold  
With the rent to meet_

He knows that she would do anything to keep him out of the dirty underbelly of the city, but he knows that that is where he can get the money he needs to get his band rolling. _Then I can be out of here and on tour in _big _cities, with loads of money and fans. _It would kill him to have to make his mother give up anything she's earned for something he knows she doesn't believe will actually work, so he works at the cabaret instead, just another one of the attractive boys in leather serving drinks to people.

He wonders about the master of ceremonies there. He sees some of the other cabaret people, performers and the other club boys out and about, when he has time to go out, buying food, clothing, and things. But he never sees that man outside of the club. Perhaps he has and just doesn't recognize him. He doubts it, but it's possible. The master of ceremonies just is not the kind of person to be worrying about food and family and rent like everyone else. That is what makes him unreal.

_I don't care much  
Go or stay  
I don't care very much  
Either way_

The boy thinks that no one will notice if he doesn't show up for work every now and then. And seemingly, no one does. And in fact, the emcee of the club tells him that no one will care very much. The words sound false coming from him, in the German accent, but the boys knows that not too many people _would _care. He believes that the master of ceremonies would care, but he doesn't know.

He misses a day of work, he goes to the white-painted man clad (or unclad) in a performing tuxedo and looks him right in the eye, trying to see whether the man has been watching him. He thinks the other man has. Every time that he is too tired or too busy to come in to that shift of work, he tries to see if the other man cares. So it was inevitable, after some time of this that a kiss should happen.

_So if you kiss me  
If we touch  
Warning's fair  
I don't care  
Very much_

After all, what is a kiss anyway? A simple press of lips. If the boy and the master of ceremonies got too close together, it was bound to happen. But there is nothing but the cabaret in the man's soul and the boy is still longing for his dream of being a musician. So it was no all-consuming love, in fact no love at all. They both say to themselves, that the other doesn't care. And it goes on, a kiss here and there until one night the boy doesn't go home, and stays over at the cabaret. He learns where the master of ceremonies sleeps at night. But it isn't that big a shock. The man _is _the Kit Kat Klub, so it was normal that he not leave it when the work is done. They aren't concentrating on living arrangements anyway.

When the boy finally goes home that morning, that Saturday morning, his mother is frantic with worry. "Where were you all night? You weren't home when I got home from the hospital, and with no note! It hought you'd dies!"

"Sorry Mom," is his only reply. "I was too tired to come home, and stayed at work overnight. I thought you'd be mad if I came home too late anyway."

_Words sound false  
When your coat's too thin  
Feet don't waltz  
When the roof caves in_

And so a lie is told, and life goes on. But the mother's shift is shorter, and she is earning less money. Clothes are patched instead of bought new, and thinner even as the weather gets colder. The boy arrives at work in the same jeans as the day before and the day before that and wearing a blue button—up shirt (the only long-sleeved one he owns) that he believes he will have forever and his ever-present leather jacket.

The night, at the end of the shift that the boy works, he pauses at the door and turns to look at Table Four where the master of ceremonies sits tonight. He gives the man a long look and then turns out the door into the cold. He doesn't notice the eyes that follow him, heavily ringed in eyeliner and tinged with regret. The boy leaves and the man stares after him.

The boy doesn't come into work again. He has funded his band's sound equipment and the first of three gigs. He got what he wanted. And he tells himself the he doesn't care that he left and a new part of life is beginning. He doesn't care. Very much.

_So if you kiss me  
If we touch  
Warning's fair  
I don't care  
Very much._


End file.
